All the people upon the earth are to be regarded
as having used one divine language, and so long as they lived
harmoniously together were preserved in the use of this divine
language, and they remained without moving from the east so long as
they were imbued with the sentiments of the “light,” and of
the “reflection” of the eternal light.41844184ἐς
ὅσον
εἰσὶ τὰ τοῦ
φωτὸς καὶ τοῦ
ἀπὸ φωτὸς
ἀϊδίου
ἀπαυγάσματος
φρονοῦντες. But when they departed from the east,
and began to entertain sentiments alien to those of the east,41854185ἀλλότρια
ἀνατολῶν
φρονοῦντες. they found a place in the land of Shinar
(which, when interpreted, means “gnashing of teeth,” by way
of indicating symbolically that they had lost the means of their
support), and in it they took up their abode. Then, desiring to
gather together material things,41864186τὰ τῆς
ὕλης. and to join to
heaven what had no natural affinity for it, that by means of material
things they might conspire against such as were immaterial, they said,
“Come, let us made bricks, and burn them with fire.”
Accordingly, when they had hardened and compacted these materials of
clay and matter, and had shown their desire to make brick into stone,
and clay into bitumen, and by these means to build a city and a tower,
the head of which was, at least in their conception, to reach up to the
heavens, after the manner of the “high things which exalt
themselves against the knowledge of God,” each one was handed
over (in proportion to the greater or less departure from the east
which had taken place among them, and in proportion to the extent in
which bricks had been converted into stones, and clay into bitumen, and
building carried on out of these materials) to angels of character more
or less severe, and of a nature more or less stern, until they had paid
the penalty of their daring deeds; and they were conducted by those
angels, who imprinted on each his native language, to the different
parts of the earth according to their deserts: some, for example,
to a region of burning heat, others to a country which chastises its
inhabitants by its cold; others, again, to a land exceedingly difficult
of cultivation, others to one less so in degree; while a fifth were
brought into a land filled with wild beasts, and a sixth to a country
comparatively free of these.